Android and Apple together now account for nearly 70 percent of smartphone subscribers in the U.S., according to new estimates for July put out today by comScore. Android phones command nearly 42 percent market share, while Apple’s iPhone grew slightly to capture 27 percent. Android is growing faster, up 5.4 percent from April and up 1.7 percent from June, whereas Apple’s share is up 1 percent for the three-month period and 0.4 percent fro the previous month.
The two smartphone powers keep taking share from RIM’s Blackberry, Microsoft, and Symbian. Blackberry took the biggest hit, down 4 points since April, 2011 to 21.7 percent. Microsoft’s mobile OS share is down 1 percent to 5.7 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers. And Symbian is barely hanging onto 1.9 percent share in the U.S.
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Back in May, we heard that Cliqset founder Darren Bounds was working on a stealthy new social project called Glow. Cliqset, a FriendFeed like social aggregation platform, shut its doors last Fall. Today, Bounds is revealing his newest startup (not called Glow)—Path.To.
Path.To basically aims to simplify the way professionals connect and promote themselves online. It’s sort of like About.me meets professional social network LinkedIn. Users can create photo-rich, sleek professional profiles with simple user discovery → Read More
If you’re looking for a solid Android handset with a physical QWERTY keyboard, Motorola has a few nice offerings on the table. The Fire, the Droid Pro, and the XPRT all have their strengths, and another QWERTY keyboard-equipped smartphone will soon join the ranks.
Today, Motorola announced the Motorola Pro+, an Android device catered toward the enterprise. → Read More
The concept of a NASA-backed MMO about space is one that’s been floating around for years, and thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, the project is making its first steps to becoming a reality. → Read More
Intel is forming a brand new business unit today, called Intel Federal, to ‘better address new opportunities in working with the U.S. government.’ The new subsidiary will focus exclusively on selling and advising on computing services in the government.
Initially, Intel says Intel Federal will focus on the High Performance Computing segment, including work on exascale computing with the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies. Over time, the subsidiary will work with all branches of the government.
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A new daily deals site catering to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LBGT) and allied communities has just launched, and it’s called Gaypon. The site provides its subscribers with daily offers from local and regional businesses - but only those businesses known to be gay-friendly.
In addition, Gaypon says a portion of its proceeds will be donated to local and national LGBT organizations and charities. → Read More
Though the digital world seems to be swallowing print alive, there are still some documents that you just want to hold in your hand. But with the speed and ease at which we share information these days, it’s hard for printing to keep up as far as convenience goes.
Epson’s tried to find a way to make printing as quick and painless as possible with its iPrint app, which has today extended to the Android platform. → Read More
There’s more good news for the growth of the social enterprise. Gartner is reporting today that the social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010. Worldwide social CRM is projected to total $820 million in 2011.
Gartner says that spending by buyers on social software for marketing, customer service and sales has increased by 40 percent in 2010, but social CRM remained less than 5 percent of the total CRM application market. And more than 100 vendors have social CRM offerings, but most are not profitable and generate annual revenue of less than $1 million.
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It’s one thing to hear praise for an app from geeks, it’s another when you hear it from ‘normal folks’. Onavo falls in this category.
The free data-shrinking app which we’ve praised in the past runs quietly in the background and dramatically reduces data consumption. I myself keep it running all the time, and on a recent trip abroad to San Francisco it helped me save in the neighborhood of 75% of my potential data consumption. Seeing as I was running on a roaming plan, this meant I could email, tweet, and use mapping apps with far greater freedom.
Today, Onavo is announcing it’s first venture into the Android waters. → Read More
Barnes & Noble took to the wires this morning to announced its 2012 first quarter sales and earnings. It’s mostly good news with sales in the first quarter hitting $1.4 billion, an increase of 2% over last year. Online sales increased 37% to $198 million while brick and mortar sales decreased 3% to $1 billion. The big news, however, is B&N’s Nook business increased a whooping 140% to reach $277 million, on a comparable sales basis. → Read More
InsideView, a service that mashes up social data for enterprises to increase sales productivity, is launching a new product today—CRM+.
InsideView, which has raised $37 million in funding, crawls through more than 20,000 web sites, social networks and databases including Twitter, Facebook, Reuters, and SEC filings, to give businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales operations with helping develop and maintain leads and clients. → Read More
So long, Twezr, it’s been fun. The mobile social contacts application Twezr is being shut down after having a fairly well-received launch back in November 2010. The app, for those unaware, was based on a great idea: it was a social address book. It aggregated all the activity from your phone’s contacts (e.g., phone calls, SMS’s, voicemails) alongside their social networking activity (e.g., Facebook and Twitter updates)
Now the company is removing its app from the iTunes App Store and working to build a new location-based photo sharing app called Spotpix instead. → Read More
Hold on to something tight, webOS geeks. Your favorite tablet, which I can only assume is the TouchPad, might not be the last webOS tablet incarnation from HP. An HP excutive and former webOS VP recently stated that the company could resurrect the TouchPad stating to Reuters, “tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely.” But let’s hope that HP’s Personal Systems Group head Todd Bradley remembers the TouchPad’s rough path to success. → Read More
Nitobi, creators of the HTML5-based mobile app framework PhoneGap, have today launched the PhoneGap Facebook Connect plugin. The addition of the plugin means that developers building apps using Web technologies like HTML and JavaScript can now simplify the log in process for their apps by allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials.
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Motorola’s super-sturdy DEFY+ handset was officially revealed in a press release only a few weeks ago, but a recent announcement confirms that the device will make its UK debut early this fall.
Forgot what the DEFY+ was capable of? Here’s a quick recap: the rugged Android handset packs a 1 GHz processor (a 20% improvement in speed over the proc found in the original DEFY), a 3.7-inch touchscreen display that’s covered by a plate of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, and a water-resistant, dust proof body. A 5 megapixel camera peeks out of the back, and the device comes with 2 GB of onboard storage and a 2 GB MicroSD card. → Read More
Today is a big day for Samsung. If you haven’t heard, the phone maker is unveiling the U.S. variants of its flagship handset, the Galaxy S II, tonight in New York (and you can bet we’ll be in attendance).
But if that weren’t enough, Samsung also announced three new Bada-powered smartphones today, and each brings something special to the table. → Read More
One of Android’s biggest success stories so far has been the Dolphin Browser, a third-party browser that includes plenty of niceties that Android’s stock browser doesn’t: things like gestures, handy sidebars to access menus, user agent spoofing, and add-ons (which are basically extensions). Dolphin’s recently raised $10 million from top-tier VC Sequoia, and the app just passed 9 million total downloads.
And that’s just on Android. Today, the app is coming to the iPhone. It went live late last night, and you can download it right here.
As with other browsers on the iPhone, Dolphin uses the core Safari renderer to display content (in other words, Dolphin hasn’t built a new browser from the ground up — it’s adding a new layer of features on top of Apple’s browser). → Read More
Exclusive - Woozworld, a developer of a social game / virtual world for tweens (kids aged 9-14, more specifically), has raised $6 million in new funding from Telesystem and iNovia Capital along with unnamed angel investors. In addition, Bernard Gershon, former general manager and senior vice president of Disney, has joined the startup’s board.
The capital will be used to expand Woozworld’s services to include mobile platforms and boost its marketing efforts to grow reach. → Read More
E la Carte, a company that develops a tableside tablet for the restaurant and related hospitality industries, has raised $4 million in funding from Lightbank, the venture fund created by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. The Y Combinator-backed startup previously raised more than $1 million from angel investors including SV Angel, Dave McClure, Joshua Schachter, Roy Rodenstein, and Skip Sack, a former board member and SVP at Applebee’s chain of restaurants.
As we’ve written in the past, E la Carte launched ‘Presto,’ earlier this year to bring user-friendly tablets to restaurants to bring efficiency to the tableside and ordering experience. The 7-inch tablet includes a digital menu that lets you sift through the restaurant’s food and drink selection via photos and detailed descriptions using a touch-screen interface. There’s also a section for Games, including trivia and a drawing app. And, finally, there’s a tab for paying. → Read More
